Thursday, 31 May 2007

Now this has the Banksy sense of humour, but isn't a patch on Banksy's art. It's Jeff Koons' Lobster, one of his Popeye Series, which you can view at the Gagosian Gallery, London, from 1 June to 27 July 2007. Must say it's the wittiest lavatory chain handle I've seen in yonks. If the Chinese knock these out at 50p a go, Coxsoft Art will definitely buy one for the loo. If visitors accuse me of bad taste, so what?

This has recently appeared for auction on eBay and Chaos wants to know if it's genuine. Er ... I don't pretend to know, but my guess is they don't speak French where Banksy comes from and I reckon the lettering is too arty-farty for Banksy. And where's the Banksy humour? No, I reckon that bidder prepared to lash out £1 has its mark. Of course the only person who can tell us for sure is the lad himself. Banksy?

The next biggy at The National Gallery, London, is Dutch Portraits: The Age of Rembrandt and Frans Hals, which opens on 27 June and continues until 16 September 2007. The Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis - the gallery that did a Brillo-pad job on Vermeer's Girl With A Pearl Earring - is making its first major international loan in 50 years for this exhibition. Admission charges for timed entry are diabolical: adults £10, silver surfers £9. Don't even think about it. Go on Wednesday evenings after 6pm and get in for £5. It will be in the Sainsbury Wing.

Wednesday, 30 May 2007

The latest two waxworks to be unveiled at Madame Tussauds in London are of Prince Charles and Shah Rukh Khan. Who? Some Bollywood heart-throb. Guess which one I've shown. Excellent likeness, but he's hardly photogenic, is he? I guess that's not the point. He's famous, and a waxwork is about as near as most of us will get to him.

The Marquetry Society of Great Britain's National Marquetry Exhibition 2007 is hosted this year by the Redbridge Marquetry Group. The exhibition opened yesterday at St John's R.C. School, Turpins Lane, Woodford Bridge, Essex, and continues until Saturday 2 June. The quality of art is very high, as you can see by the example I've chosen from the online Winners Gallery 2006: Wren in the Bulrushes by Peter Sheen of the Bexley Group, 2nd in the Beginners Class 2006 (title link).

This is the pits. Self-proclaimed "performance artist" Mark McGowan has eaten a corgi on a radio show - London-based arts station 104.4 Resonance FM - as some sort of insane protest against Prince Phillip's shooting a fox. He admits people might think it "tasteless"! Depends on the seasoning. Isn't it high time the authorities started prosecuting so-called "performance artists" under the Trades Descriptions Act? Why should twerps without a modicum of artistic talent be allowed to get away with mislabelling their products?

Tuesday, 29 May 2007

Is there nothing to which Sir Nicholas Serota won't stoop in order to brainwash punters into believing that the tripe in Tate Modern is art? His latest wheeze is to invite 150 schoolchildren from across the UK to a sleepover party in the Turbine Hall. They'll sleep in tents which they've decorated themselves with ideas taken from the exhibits. Elephant dung, maybe? Stacks of old chairs? Do modern kids still wear pyjamas or nightdresses or do they sleep in the buff? Will there be girls' tents and boys' tents or will it all be politically correct unisex camping? Will Tinky Winky be there to kiss the boys goodnight? Don't forget to search the little devil's handbags, Sir Nick, before and after their sleepover.

Is Tinky Winky a poofter? is the question that's got Poland's official children's rights spokesperson Ewa Sowinska's knickers in a twist. Having noticed that Tinky is a boy with a woman's handbag - Ahhhhhh! - Ewa has ordered psychologists to investigate whether BBC TV's kiddy show Teletubbies promotes a homosexual lifestyle. If they find it does, the show could be banned from Polish TV. Calm down, dear. It's quite normal for Brit. lads to carry women's handbags. The thieving little gits are always snatching them. It has nothing to do with being gay. It's to fund their smoking, boozing, drug-taking and knife-buying. It's quite butch really. At least, they think it is. And it's more fun than school.

I've added a third Comparisons Page to my website, briefly telling the story of Giovanni Baglione's bitter feud with Caravaggio (title link). You'll also find a 1014x768 version of the two paintings of Sacred and Profane Love. My thanks to Dave of Cameradio for the research (CLICK).

Monday, 28 May 2007

Would you buy a second hand car from this man? No. However, if you were a lady looking for a free ride for life, you'd grab this magnificent chunk of wealth and power with both hands. Here, folks, is a courtship portrait, designed to make the prospective bride's heart flutter with avarice. Painted by Raphael, it shows Lorenzo de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino, in all his glory. Never seen this Renaissance masterpiece before? That's because it's been in private hands for 40 years. Now it's up for sale and will be displayed at Christie's in London from 30 June. BBC News posted this story a week ago, but didn't have a graphic good enough for Coxsoft Art. Thanks to Christie's Images Ltd and ArtDaily, here's a good'un (CLICK). Value? Estimated at £10m to £15m.

London's V&A Museum is 150 years old this June and has chosen to mark its anniversary by asking 150 "leading designers, architects, photographers, fashion designers and artists, including ... Tracey Emin..." to add a page to an anniversary album. What? Tracey Emin! Couldn't the V&A have found a real artist? Guess not. The best it could come up with was "Anthony" Box-of-Fog Gormley. That's another institution which can't spell your name, Antony! (Trust Coxsoft Art News to get it right.) The pages of this album will be displayed in the Grand Entrance from 26 June and on the V&A website from 11 June, before being bound. Wow! Do you ever feel that the Brit. Art Establishment lives on another planet?

Sunday, 27 May 2007

Today, Christie's Hong Kong kicked off its four-day auction of Oriental artworks. BBC News (title link) is showing nine of the goodies up for grabs, which include these two exquisite Chinese peach bowls from the Yongzheng period (1723-1735). Imagine paying $4m for them and the missus drops them on the floor while doing the washing up! Grounds for divorce?

Writing of Muslim Fundamentalist gangsters reminds me: two of my neighbours - brothers of local lad Anthony Garcia jailed for the usual bomb-plotting lunacy - have absconded. They're suspected of involvement in international terrorism and wanting to kill British soldiers and were supposed to report regularly to the local nick. Control orders, for Goodness' sake! Our legal system is so naive. They're probably feasting in a Pakistani murder-training camp right now, together with their Dagenham mate Cerie Bullivant, who's also absconded. If you see them, ring the anti-terrorist hotline: 0800 789 321.

In the world of commercial art they're called "lettering artists". In the Islamic world they're called "targets". Yesterday, Khalil al-Zahawi - Iraq's leading calligrapher of classical Arabic script - was shot dead by gunmen outside his home. Why murder an artist? Do Muslim Fundamentalist gangsters need a reason to kill anyone? He wasn't one of them. That's enough. I've illustrated this post with a beautiful example of zoomorphic calligraphy: lettering forming the shape of an animal, in this case a fish. Don't ask me what it says.

The latest Art4Heart News shows 70 thumbnail graphics which represent the work of those 70 contemporary artists who have been featured by Art4Heart since May 2006. It's an impressive collection. Over the past year, Coxsoft Art News has featured nine of these artists: Wayne Paige (CLICK), Liron Sissman (CLICK), Dirk Monteny (CLICK), Stefanie Rocknak (CLICK), Martin La Spina (CLICK), Etienne Saint-Amant (CLICK), Siddiqua Shahnawaz (CLICK), Domen Lombergar (CLICK) and Diana Miller-Pierce (CLICK). What is so refreshing about Art4Heart News is that it gives us a glimpse of what genuine artists are creating in Europe and America, while shunning all that gimmicky anti-art tripe which hits the headlines to give contemporary art a bad name.

Saturday, 26 May 2007

It's big. It's Hockney. And it's surprisingly good. Bigger Trees Near Warter is the largest painting David Hockney has ever done: 40ft by 15ft. It comprises 50 paintings and was custom made to fit the back wall of the Royal Academy of Art's largest gallery. What better way of publicizing the opening of the RA's Summer Exhibition on 11 June than to have David Hockney unveil his latest effort for the show?

Friday, 25 May 2007

Despite its curvaceous female figure, this painting by Edouard Manet - Femme nue se coiffant (Woman Doing Her Hair) - is as flat, lifeless and boring as it could get. At first glance it looks as though some kids buried her waist-deep in sand on the beach, but no: it's a bed she's sitting on. And where's the light source? Coming through the ceiling? Flesh tones? What flesh tones? As art it's not even third-rate, but as an investment ... ah, now you're talking. It made a record price for a painting sold in France since 1993: $7.5m. Pop it in the family vault for a few years. Forget Paris. Sell it in London or New York, where the insane money is.

According to Saatchi's Your Gallery Blog, Banksy's agent is Steve Lazarides, who runs the Lazarides Gallery in London's Soho. If You Lived Here You’d Be Home By Now is Stanley Donwood's second solo exhibition at the Lazarides Gallery. He made his name creating album and poster art for the band Radiohead and won a Grammy Award in 2001. I'll give this one a miss, thanks.

Thursday, 24 May 2007

Milton Greene's Marilyn

To give you a comparison with Andy Warhol's overrated twaddle (see below) here's a photo from Milton H. Greene's famous photo shoot of Marilyn Monroe in New York City in 1954. This pose is called Ballerina Sitting. No soppy Pop Art colour changes, just a great photographer with a delightfully artful subject. The humour of this pose - the naff model chin-on-fingertip and the clodhopping feet - shows a complete rapport between sitter and artist rarely found in portraiture. Now look at Warhol's mess. Pathetic, isn't it?

The National Portrait Gallery in London is going pop in October for the first time with a UK/USA exhibition Pop Art Portraits, which, judging by Andy Warhol's ghastly portrait of Marilyn Monroe - Lemon Marilyn - promises to be a complete bummer. This stuff looks so old-fashioned and uninspired, because the computer revolution enables anyone to churn it out. One thing that will bring the punters in is a room devoted to Marilyn Monroe. As an iconic sex goddess, she has stood the test of time far better than has Pop Art.

Belgium is celebrating the centenary of the birth of Georges Remi with commemorative stamps, currency, a new museum, exhibitions ... er ... hang on. Who? He's better known as Hergé, creator of that indefatigable cub reporter Tintin and his faithful mutt Snowy. First printed in 1928, the Tintin comics have sold more than 200 million copies worldwide and have been translated into 55 languages. That makes Hergé one of the most popular artists ever. Arts Council take note.

Wednesday, 23 May 2007

This unpublished crayon drawing Winnie-The-Pooh and Tigger by E.H. Shepard fetched a mere £21,600 at Bonhams in London. Pooh Visiting in Owl's Parlour (CLICK) failed to sell, and four sketches for the A.A. Milne poem Missing sold for only £3,600. These prices were well below the estimated values. So, poor old Pooh isn't one for the vaults of big-money "art" investors. Good thing too; those tasteless twerps drive up auction prices to insane levels.

The webmaster at Cameradio has kindly sent me information about the painting of Cutty Sark I posted last Monday (title link). The artist was Montague Dawson (English painter 1895-1973) and the painting is called Racing Home: The Cutty Sark. To read a brief biography of Montague Dawson, CLICK. To see more of his beautiful maritime paintings, CLICK. Thanks, Dave.

If a ten-mile-long iceberg breaking away from the Canadian Arctic coast - Ayles Ice Island - hasn't convinced you that global warming is a fact, then how about some evidence closer to home? My garden has a large Philadelphus coronarius shrub that's at least 70 years old. It always used to blossom during Wimbledon fortnight (the last week in June and first week in July). In the last few years I've noticed it flowering two weeks early. This year, it's in blossom now: more than one month early!

There's nothing like doing it while you think of it. I found a back view of Hiram Powers' The Greek Slave (1844) plus a crisper front view. The copy with the blue background needed increased contrast to fit in with the newer photos. Then came all the fiddly stuff. Here's the result. Click the title link to view the 1024x768 version.

Tuesday, 22 May 2007

It always surprises me when art galleries or museums go to all the trouble and expense of organising an exhibition, then forget to remind their webmasters to move details from the "forthcoming exhibitions" page to the "current exhibitions" page. So, despite the fact that Hiram Powers: Genius in Marble opened at the Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati on 18 May, the title link takes you to its "upcoming" page. Oh well. If you're in the neighbourhood, now's your chance to view 40 works by the "American Michelangelo". Go for it. (N.B. I've shown Hiram's daydream of bondage The Greek Slave (1844), because it's his most famous work. Don't expect to find it on display. I'm still hoping to find a third angle for a Coxsoft Art triple-view graphic.)

Monday, 21 May 2007

You've probably heard the sad news that Cutty Sark - the most famous tea clipper in the world - was devastated by fire early this morning. Here's a beautiful painting of Cutty Sark as she might have been seen in her glory days. If you know the name of the artist, please email me.

In case you don't know the silly hat I referred to in my previous post, here it is: Lucas Cranach the Elder's Cupid complaining to Venus (c.1525). The lad is being stung by bees from a honeycomb he's holding and is moaning to Venus about it. "Hard cheese, Cupid" she ripostes. "You wanted it, you've got it, bees and all. How d'you like my new titfer? I bought it for Ascot. Stop snivelling and say it suits me." Typical goddess.

The Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery in London is to hold the first exhibition in Britain devoted to the German Renaissance painter, Lucas Cranach the Elder: Temptation in Eden: Lucas Cranach’s Adam and Eve, from 21 June to 23 September 2007. Adam looks as though he's just discovered gravity. Ouch! And to prove that women wore silly hats long before the Garden of Eden was invented, Cranach's Cupid complaining to Venus (c.1526-30) will be on loan from the National Gallery, London. To compliment its Cranach exhibition, the Courtauld will also show a Special Display of German Drawings, including Albrecht Dürer's One of the Wise Virgins (1493).

Here's a glimmer of good news for the William Morris Gallery and Vestry House Museum: Councillor Naz Sarkar - the Philistine who stirred up a furore over his proposed cuts - has lost responsibility for Leisure, Arts and Culture! So much for a clueless clot who cares nothing for English heritage, culture or arts. He is replaced by Councillor Geraldine Reardon, whom we believe to be a more cultured person. (Maybe it's just the spectacles). She is one of two Labour councillors elected to the William Morris Ward, so she should appreciate the value of the Gallery to Waltham Forest, to Britain and to the World. Time will tell....

The San Diego Museum of Art has just opened Waking Dreams: The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites from the Delaware Art Museum. The emphasis is on Pre-Raphaelite art, but the exhibition covers the Arts And Crafts Movement and includes two chairs designed by William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. In total 130 paintings, watercolors, drawings, ceramics, jewellery, and furniture are on loan from the Delaware Art Museum, which boasts the "most significant" Pre-Raphaelite collection outside Great Britain. The exhibition continues until 29 July 2007. Have you signed the petition to save the William Morris Gallery in London? If not, CLICK. Over 10,000 people have already signed.

Sunday, 20 May 2007

Blind Light (fog in a box) at the Hayward Gallery has got BBC News so excited that it's spelled Antony Gormley's name correctly. It's also put 10 photos of his works online, so we can all have a butchers at his past triumphs. One can't help noticing that today's "leading" artists don't do much with their hands. They come up with an idea - good, bad or indifferent - and get students or Chinese potters to do all the work for them. I can't say it's my idea of art, but this stainless-steel statue is a good'un, even if it did take a team of blacksmiths to make it.

Spitting Image is to return to ITV in 2008, twelve years after it was scrapped; but computer animations will take the place of the old latex puppets. So, we can expect a visually more sophisticated show than the original, but what about jokes? The evidence across TV channels is that comedy writers are a dying breed. They may actually be extinct. Pity, because our arrogant, useless politicians need to be jerked out of their complacency, and witty political satire is the best way to do it.

Book Sale in Ilford

The next big sale of ex-library books, videos and CD's at Central Library, Ilford, is on Saturday 26 May, from 10am to 3pm. Railway enthusiasts take note: an informant tells me there will be historic steam train books going cheap; art books too.

Saturday, 19 May 2007

The Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has ruled that Dame Elizabeth Taylor can keep a Van Gogh painting she bought in 1963 for £92,000 at Sotheby's in London: Vue de l'Asile et de la Chapelle de Saint-Remy (View of the Asylum and Chapel at Saint-Remy) dated 1889. It's now estimated to be worth £5-8m ($10-15m). The family of a previous owner alleged it had been stolen by the Nazis, but Dame Elizabeth's lawyers claimed there was evidence it had been sold in the late 1920's and had passed through the hands of two Jewish art dealers without Nazi coercion. Put a good copy on the Web, Liz, in case it gets nicked.

Brits contemplating a holiday in the south of France might like to know that the Musée Fabre, Montpellier, Languedoc, has been reopened after four years of extensive renovation costing 62.5 millions of those euro thingies. It is now claimed to be one of the most beautiful fine art museums in Europe. Click the title link for details (in English). Thanks, Alan.

The Royal Horticultural Society's Chelsea Flower Show 2007 is the big arts event in London next week, from Monday 22 to Friday 26 May. "Art?" you quibble. Of course. Landscape gardening is a major art form and there will probably be veggie sculptures as well. Last year's reclining female figure made a big hit. BBC Gardening is already getting excited about Aunty's live coverage of the show (CLICK).

Friday, 18 May 2007

Art collector Richard Weisman is selling his collection of 10 portraits of athletes which he commissioned from Andy Warhol. The collection - a snip at £14.2 million complete - is on display at Martin Summers Fine Art in London until 6 July. For those of you in foreign parts, BBC London Entertainment is showing eight of these portraits online (title link). The likenesses are excellent, but so they should be; these are photographic images given a Warhol makeover. His icy colour scheme for figure skater Dorothy Hamill is particularly appropriate.

Thursday, 17 May 2007

Having escaped the yoke of Soviet oppression, Estonia recently decided to relocate a Soviet war memorial which it regards as symbolising Soviet occupation. The Kremlin is furious. So are ethnic Russians living in Estonia. They rioted. (Foreigners are always doing that sort of thing, aren't they?) Russia has blitzed Estonian government and banking websites with spam, causing chaos. NATO has sent experts to help Estonia shore up its cyber defences against the Russian bully.

Now here's a really oddball exhibition: Out Of Hours, which opens at the Mall Galleries on 29 May and continues until 9 June. The artists paint as a hobby, but look at the high quality of Martin Buffrey's Penguin Gang before you dismiss their art. They are all professional automotive designers, working for Jaguar, Land Rover or Aston Martin. Admission is free. At this price, it must be well worth a visit.

Today saw the opening of the Royal Society of British Artists Annual Exhibition at the Mall Galleries in London. Don't dither, because this exhibition closes at 1pm on 27 May. Admission: £2.50, concessions £1.50. I'm not sure whether "Hommage" is word play or a typo; but who cares if an artist can't spell? It's the brushwork that counts.

Are those flipping, flapping, scrolling, jumping adverts on websites driving you potty? Millions of users have already discovered a Firefox Browser extension which allows you to replace those irritating adverts with blanks. Eyebeam OpenLab is now working on an extension that will replace those blanks with art images from a curated database. It's due to be ready this summer.

Wednesday, 16 May 2007

Here's another London exhibition which begins tomorrow: Alberto Brusamolino: Celle del Dormitorio; the frescoes by Angelico at San Marco in Florence, at the Whitecross Gallery. This interesting title seems to be no more than a feeble excuse for showing black and white photos of naked men posing as monks. If that's your thing....

Coxsoft Art first warned you about Antony Gormley's Blind Light back in March (CLICK). Now it's here, at the Hayward Gallery, London, and BBC News and BBC London News have got all excited about it. Don't ask me why. It's just a glass room full of fog. Why devalue the term "art" by calling a box of fog "art"? Let's call it what it really is: a novelty for kids raised in a clean environment. It's nothing like those pea-souper killer smogs which blotted out London when I was a boy. Without the threat of coughing your heart up or of walking into a London bus crawling the other way, it's nothing. Killer smogs were yellow. If you survived them, they were an exciting experience. They turned boys into men. For Gormley's pale imitation, the Hayward expects you to pay £8! Anyone prepared to pay £8 to grope around in a box of fog needs a psychiatrist ... or some naked companions. The first couple to have sex in there, please email me.

As a child, I greatly enjoyed the charming illustrations of Alfred Bestall. As an adult, I still regard him as having been one of the UK's finest illustrators of children's books. His speciality was the Daily Express's Rupert Bear, seen here with chum Bill Badger. Bit of a toff, Bill, with his bow tie, Eton collar, bum-freezer jacket, striped trousers and yellow waistcoat. Now he's in trouble. The Brit. badger desperately needs our help. Misguided farmers are demanding a badger cull, due to the myth that badgers spread bovine TB. In Ireland, the badger has been virtually exterminated to safeguard Irish cattle. With what result? Ireland has twice as many cattle infected with bovine TB as we do in the UK (title link). Yet Government is prepared to kill our badgers! To sign a petition against this lunacy, CLICK.

Tuesday, 15 May 2007

Er...artistic kiddies, at least. MIT's Media Lab has developed a simple graphics interface called Scratch, which is now available as a free download for Windows PC's and Apple Macs. Scratch allows users to create their own animated stories, video games and interactive artworks. So far so good. I tried to visit the Scratch website (CLICK) and gave up, due to the boredom of watching that horizontal blue bar creeping across my screen at a pace of one column of pixels every few minutes. Oh well, guess I'll stick with animated GIF's for a while longer.

As regular visitors will know, Coxsoft Art occasionally dips into the advertising lark. Here's a punchy example: Tell The Government To Choose The Right Biofuel Or The Orang-Utan Gets It, from Greenpeace and other concerned agencies. Vast tracts of Urang-Utan habitat are being cleared for the planting of biofuel crops. This is insane. There isn't enough arable land on our planet to grow crops for both machines and people. We have a stark choice ahead: feed the cars or feed the people. Recycled biofuel is another matter. Think of all the cooking oil used by Big Mac, restaurants and factories around the world. Reclaimed, it can run cars.

Does your firm or local authority still subscribe to the naive and patronizing notion that our primitive African cousins should be given the UK's old computers? Coxsoft Art has warned you that the Nigerian Mafia removes the hard drives to undelete our personal records for criminal purposes and dumps everything else. Forward the latest news to your idiotic bosses: China has successfully launched a Nigerian communications satellite into orbit. The launch alone cost Nigeria $311m. So much for our "primitive" cousins!

Monday, 14 May 2007

Artists in Mumbai and other Indian cities are demonstrating against "moral policing" by Hindu Fundamentalists. Recently, art student Chandra Mohan had his artwork vandalised because it depicted naked men. As if this wasn't enough, he was then arrested by the police on an obscenity charge! Look at the naked nutter in the above picture. This is a sadhu - a traditional Hindu holy man - who wears nothing but a coating of ash. How can Hindus complain about paintings of naked men while their own sadhus wander along the High Street in the buff? Silly question, Coxsoft. You can't expect logic from religious lunatics. Hypocrisy is their game.

The National Portrait Gallery, London, has re-hung its late 20th Century display to give prominence to artists, rather than to their famous sitters. To read about Artists and Sitters, New Display of the Collection: 1960-90, click the title link. If the example shown - a young Prince Charles - is anything to go by, the art of portraiture died in the 20th Century. The likeness may be excellent (my enlargement to the right), but have you ever seen a more boring, badly composed painting? Is this how Bryan Organ "sees" Prince Charles, as a boring square trapped in a boring square world? Okay, I'm no royalist, but don't inflict the boredom on me.